If you have lived in a small town at some point in your life, you will understand these ten things all people from a small town know to be true.
1. When someone asks where you're from, you usually say the nearest large city.
Every time someone asks where I'm from I always say, "This little town called Clanton between Montgomery and Birmingham." I usually get two different answers: "Oh, the place with the peaches" or "Yeah, I have no idea where that is."
2. You graduated with most of the people you've known since kindergarten
Even after moving schools after second grade, I still graduated with a lot of people that I met in kindergarten.
3. Some of your teachers probably graduated from the same high school as you.
And they will remind you of it too.
4. You basically know everyone.
And everyone knows you. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing because you know everyone's business and they know yours.
5. You can't leave your house without seeing a bunch of people you know.
Driving through town, you probably see about five people you know by driving less than two miles. Don't event get me started on going into Walmart. If you're avoiding someone in a small town, then you should probably avoid Walmart, too.
6. High school football games were the place to be on Friday nights.
If you weren't at your school's football game, you were probably the only one from town not there. If it wasn't football season, though, you probably drove at least thirty minutes to go to the movies, go shopping, or eat somewhere other than the McDonald's that's been there for 109482 years, or a sketchy Taco Bell.
7. If you had an older sibling, your teachers probably called you by his or her name.
I never got called by my brother's name (that would've been awkward), but every first day of school, I would always have at least one teacher say "You're Carlos's little sister."
8. You were late to something because you got stuck behind a tractor.
There were some mornings when I woke up at 7:15, just trying to get to school on time, and sure enough there would be a tractor in front of me going -20 miles per hour.
9. You always claimed to hate it, but deep down you were glad to be from a small town.
Yes, it may have been boring at times, and you might have wanted to leave every time someone started drama, but it was your home, and you loved it. For some people it may have been a relief to leave, but for others, it was bittersweet.
